My fellow trainers

Well, this is the trainers team for the current ThoughtWorks University! From left to right: Felix, Sudeep, JK, me, Chirdeep, Kai, and Julie. We come from Canada, Australia, US, and India--and more China, German, and Indonesia if we count our origins.
I love the current team. I can feel completely comfortable with each one of them. They are not too much party goers, and definitely not too nerdy either. I have to say I'm the most junior trainer, and the only one who is not "senior" at the company. But it's okay. I am here because I want to learn and improve myself--of course, besides to help others grow :)

I am hoping to blog about my coaching / training / learning experience at TWU in my (new) wiki. Stay tuned.

Back to the basics

I think living in India has made me rethink the way I live my life. True, Bangalore is a big city, and so is Chicago, and Surabaya. I have lived all my life in big cities. But they are different in many ways.

Surabaya is big, crowded, and has bad traffic in many places, and has some not-so-clean spots throughout the city. To complete legal matters, money is almost always involved: with the police, getting a drivers license, even getting a national ID. Getting to anywhere requires a car, even to the restaurant at the end of my housing complex. The average white collar salary in Surabaya is not powerful enough to pay for cars, luxury meals, nor houses. To survive in Surabaya, I have to depend on my parents, on their car, their network, and sometimes--their money.

Chicago is also big, crowded, and has bad traffic in many places, but it is a clean city overall, at least in the suburbs areas where I live. What makes it different from Surabaya is the infrastructure and the laws. Public transportation is well-managed and can comfortably be used by anybody. I can take buses and trains with assurance that I will get to my destination on time and without hassle. I also can handle legal matters myself without much confusion. There are rules and procedures to do most things. On top of that, my salary is good enough to afford buying a car, luxury meals, and a house. It is not hard for me to survive in Chicago without dependency on my parents or other people.

Living in Bangalore makes it all different. The city itself may not be much different from Surabaya. But as a foreigner, I stay here almost like a local person in some sense. I now walk a lot more, 2 km round-trip to get groceries, dinner, and some shopping. In Surabaya and Chicago, I would have driven a car! Walking more also means I'm seeing more of the city, the broken pavements on the side of the road, the smelly river, the beggars, the small provision stores, the homeless dogs.. If I start thinking about them, I realize how many things I take for granted all my life. I have to say these things are privileges:
- Having (almost) unlimited supply of hot water--or simply water--for bathing
- Excessive supply of food
- Enough lighting and electric power in the house
- A good laundry machine that washes my clothes, rinses, and spins them, plus a dryer machine that dries them 'till ready-for-wear
- A clean house. You know what I mean.
- Excessive clothes
- Living with family. Having someone close who I can count on for help and company.
- A car

For the last item, I have to admit that 10 tops and 4 pants are more than enough for my 4-month stay in India. Given all those clothes are folded, they can fit in one clothes drawer. In contrast, in Chicago I have over 6 drawers of clothes and many many more hung on the rack, not to include those that are in the luggage, brand-new, waiting to be worn. I do have an excess.

Living here in India makes me realize how much of my belongings are unnecessary. I wonder how many things I can strip out and still live a decent life. Many, I'm sure.
I am thankful, Lord, for the blessings you have given me and continue to give me.

India oh India

It's been a month now that I am in India. I have to say, I hate getting sick. I was sick once with diarrhea and bad tummy ache. Praise the Lord to point me to a doctor in my apartment complex and soon I was on antibiotics. The electrolyte drink helped a lot, too. But before I recovered completely, I went out to eat, and got sick again. Yea, right. This time it hit at a bad time because it was getting closer to the first day of TWU, and I had to prepare for my sessions. My tummy bloated like never before in my life. As I sat down, I could feel it was getting bigger. I decided going to the hospital is the right thing to do. So I went and got an injection to reduce my tummy acid. This time I made sure to eat light food for a longer time and not get myself too tired.

I still can't believe that life in Bangalore has two different extremes. On one side there are very cheap places to eat, where a plate of dosa/paratha is 30 rupees (enough to make me full) and a cup of tea/coffee (strong one!) is under 10 rupees. On the other side, a lavish Sunday brunch costs almost 1800 rupees. That is 60 times more than the dosa plate! What the heck.

Normally, I would not go, but I did not know today we were planning to go to one. The location is UB City, a crazy mall full of extravagantly expensive stuffs: Louis Vuitton, Bulvgari, Jean-Paul Cartier, and many others of that class. I asked the security guard of a bookstore, and he was like, "Book? There is none, Mam." This is crazy. But I have arrived so I decided to stay. The food was good, the ambience was delightful, the place clean and comfortable. We sat on an outside deck for 4 hours or so (yes, 4 hours). I can't believe I could stay and chat with people for that long. The chocolate molten cake was the best. Absolutely delicious, both the cake and the molten chocolate. I just wished the vanilla ice cream was colder and tougher.

On a more somber note, one of my coachees fell sick again. He was out sick for almost the whole week last week, from diarrhea and all. On Saturday he got better so we ventured out to eat as a group. Big mistake. His tummy complained, like mine did. He went to the hospital again yesterday, but he did not feel much relief. I am very sad and felt somewhat responsible for not stopping him to eat out last Friday. I pray that God will grant him good health soon.

There is no doubt I miss home: my sister, Happy, and home. I miss the comfy bed I have, and clean comfortable bath room. I also miss home-cooked healthy food. I am still skeptical about the healthiness of Indian food, even the veg ones. There is just too many spices and/or thick sauces in the dishes, they can't be that healthy. I wonder how much weight I will gain by the end of TWU.

Ah, there is much more to say. But I'm blogging my teaching experience and retrospective in my wiki now. I hope to post some pictures soon over here, though!